This article was taken from the July 2012 issue of Wired
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Think the art world is snobby? So does Lucky PDF, an artists' collective
from south London. Their latest project, "The School of Global
Art", is a semi-fictional roving art school that exists online and
at events, and professes to award BA, MA and PhD qualifications.
The introductory video on schoolofglobalart.org might
suggest otherwise.

Participants wishing to become artists are asked
several questions, which include, "Have you ever
slept with someone in the art profession?", and if so, "Have you
ever had a conversation with a major European curator?" The project
reflects the members' claim that art has been subsumed by the web
to form a far more uniform culture. "Art has become much more like
real life," says member Ollie Hogan, 25.

Lucky PDF operates at this
cross-section, where real life meets the virtual, bridging the time
lag that exists between museum and the digital realm. The members
of the group, which also includes James Early and John Hill, both
26, and Yuri Pattison, 25, came together "to find new ways of
funding, making and exhibiting art within a large network of
artists and collaborators," according to Hill.

Merging the crowdsourced mentality
of the web with the large-scale production infrastructure of
television, the group invites creators from various disciplines to
produce tongue-in-cheek live, online television-style programmes
and parties with an aesthetic similar to that of Chris Morris's
satirical show Brass Eye. They call it "post-internet" art -- the
idea that art online is no longer an elite field, but a mass
medium.

Collaborators include Chloe Simms,
of The Only Way is Essex (to bring "outsiders into the art world",
claim the group), and New York-based multimedia artist Cory Arcangel.

Treating the art world mean is
keeping it keen: Lucky PDF has featured at Frieze, Tate Modern, the
Barbican and the BFI. School's out.